Saku Chitose seems to have it all. As a second-year student at Fuji High School, the most prestigious school in Fukui Prefecture, he excels academically, shines in athletics, and navigates the complex social world with a charisma that places him at the very top of the school's unspoken caste system. He is surrounded by a tight-knit group of equally popular and attractive friends: the warm and effortlessly feminine Yuuko Hiiragi, the hardworking and gentle Yua Uchida, the energetic basketball ace Haru Aomi, and the coolly intelligent actress-type Yuzuki Nanase. To Saku, living an ugly life is worse than death, a philosophy that drives him to maintain his flawless reputation against the whispers of cynics who label him a womanizing scumbag on anonymous school forums.

At the start of the new school year, Saku's homeroom teacher asks him for a favor that threatens to disrupt his perfect world: to reach out to Kenta Yamazaki, a classmate who has become a shut-in and refuses to come to school. Initially seeing it as a simple task to burnish his image, Saku is surprised to find that Kenta harbors an open contempt for him and everything the popular crowd represents. Forcing his way into Kenta's room, Saku must use all his wit and social skill not to charm, but to genuinely break through the wall of resentment built by someone who has been crushed by the very system Saku dominates. This intervention forces Saku to confront the distance between those who live in the social light and those who have been denied a chance to shine.

After successfully helping Kenta reintegrate into school life, Saku is pulled into another personal crisis when Yuzuki Nanase asks him to become her fake boyfriend. What begins as a simple deception to deal with a stalker soon becomes more complicated, as the arrangement exposes hidden vulnerabilities in the cool and self-possessed Yuzuki, forcing both of them to re-evaluate their carefully constructed public personas. The series follows Saku as he navigates these and other challenges, from helping his admired upperclassman, the bookish and enigmatic Asuka Nishino, to confronting his own past regrets about quitting baseball. Each arc peels back a layer of the school's social hierarchy, exploring the burdens of popularity and the often-painful gap between public performance and private truth.